Gifted adults can be sandwiched between raising gifted children and caring for aging gifted parents.
Two studies on aging which may be of interest:
Environmental Gerontology - Thinking ahead and
planning home environments to accommodate common changes which occur with age may help seniors remain independent and age in place.
Dunedin Longitudinal StudyThe team... found that nearly 80 per cent of adult economic burden can be attributed to just 20 per cent of the Study members.
The researchers determined that this “high cost” group accounted for 81 per cent of criminal convictions, 66 per cent of welfare benefits, 78 per cent of prescription fills and 40 per cent of excess obese kilograms.
...members of this group can be identified with high accuracy when still young children.
At age three, each Study member took part in a paediatric examination that included a neurological evaluation and assessments of verbal comprehension, language development, motor skills, and social behaviour. Looking back at the test results, the team found that scoring poorly on these tests was a good predictor of going on to be in the “high cost” group.
“We also found that members of this group tended to have grown up in more socioeconomically deprived environments, experienced child maltreatment, scored poorly on childhood IQ tests and exhibited low childhood self-control,” he says.
Thinking ahead and
planning home environments to nurture toddlers' social and cognitive development may also help stave off changes which occur with aging: A person's chronological age may differ from their biological age.
The book
The Gifted Group in Later Maturity may also be of interest. It covers the group from the Terman study, in their 60's and 70's.
